Snow, falling
by Blunablue
Summary: The first winter Kaoru and Kenshin spent together - and still there's a distance between them. Can Kenshin ever share with her his memories of snow, falling? Can he leave the winter in his heart behind? Thanks for doubleR


A bigger than big Thank You to my trustworthy beta-reader Scarred SwordHeart!!

Inspired by: Taku Iwasaki – Sound of Snow Falling. Original Soundtrack OVA Rurouni Kenshin: Tsuioku-Hen,

and

Madonna - Frozen.

Word-explanations and Author's note are to be found at the end of the narration.

Ah, and who had guessed: I own nothing, no ruroKen, nor Songs.

**

* * *

**

Snow, falling.

* * *

_On a winterday like this…_

"Kenshin! Why are you daudling around? Hurry up, it's could out here!"

To emphasize her words Kaoru was waving her arms impatiently. She'd already reached the end of the road but even from the distance he could see her face, reddened from the cold winter-air.

"Hai, Kaoru-dono." Kenshin was speeding up, sighing a big, white cloud into the winter-air.

Kaoru acknowledged his obedient answer with a short nod, then turned and continued walking. The Rurouni followed, watching her back. She hugged herself, shivering. It was cold indeed. Almost at the dojo, Kaoru turned once more, shouting: "Kenshin, come on! I'm half frozen!" Having said that, she quickly opened the door and vanished from his sight.

Without any other words he knew what he had to do next, for "I'm half frozen" was a synonym for "Go and prepare the bath.

Barely able to mask his gasping and sweating Kenshin entered the courtyard of the dojo through the wooden gates.

Needless to say: _He_ was not half frozen at all. After all, he had been carrying the results of her "little" shopping-spree for hours and miles.

Pushing aside a sudden comparable thought between Kaoru's shopping-attitude and Hiko Seijuro's life-threatening backpacking-training in the mountains, Kenshin's mouth twitched in a smile.

"If Yahiko was here and not training with Sanosuke somewhere in the south," he thought, "he would stand there, in the middle of the yard, arms crossed, one eyebrow arched, pity clearly written into his face as well as admiration."

Kenshin could almost hear his words: "You carried this all the way home?! How can you do that almost a year now and still be alive?! I want to learn that Hiten Mitsurugi…"

Some minutes later the goods were stowed, the bath prepared and Kaoru in it, audibly sighing with pleasure while sinking into the warm water.

"Finally I can relax, too," the redhead sighed on his part, inwardly of course, and went to the kitchen to prepare some tea. Done that he sat down on the engawa of the house with a warm cup in his hands, just in time to watch the first snowflakes of this winter trickling down in front of a still blue afternoon-sky.

Idly Kenshin tried to focus on a single flake, tried to follow her with his blue eyes down the way but too soon he lost that little game, for many other flakes were joining "his". Before he even half emptied his cup, the ground was already covered with a thin, white and icy blanket. Somehow he couldn't turn his eyes off of this picture the courtyard, completely covered and purely white.

Kaoru's singing voice coming from the bath house was barely heard and Kenshin didn't feel the coldness of the flakes getting astray in his hair and face. All his senses were taken by this clean, untouched white in front of him. He wanted to stand up, go into the warmth of the house but instead he stayed, unable to move, paralysed by tiny flakes of white.

_I know it's not just the sight of snow that's holding me here, _he tried to analyse his sudden petrification. _Beneath the white sleeps something, covered with snow, frozen memories forever iced in my mind…_

The last months he had tried hard to open himself as completely as possible to Kaoru, after all they've gotten through together in this eleventh year of Meiji. _Then…Can I risk to open this buried box of memories now, in her company? The most painful ones, forever connected to the falling snow?_

Kenshin sighed, audibly this time, and closed his eyes, feeling cold. Still paralysed he calmly awaited the return of the so awfully familiar pictures. They came back into his consciousness instantly, like water, allowed to float through the breach in a dam.

--

_**On a winterday like this...**_

Coldness didn't bother me any longer. Since those years of training with master Hiko I've learned to ignore whatever impact a season might have on me.

Today, like every day before, we trained. And like every day before my arms and legs ached and felt heavy. Today though, I ignored all physical pain. The weight I felt on me and the redness in my face had nothing to do with the exhaustion of training.

"But Shishou, don't you understand me?!"

Hot waves of barely suppressed rage kept floating through my body.

"What good is Hiten-Mitsurugi, if we can't use it now?"

The only reply I got was the usual offending "Baka Deshi!", like a slap right into my face.

"Only a free sword can protect the people. That's the first principle of Hiten Mitsurugi, don't you understand?" Hiko's deep voice thudded in my ears.

Angrily I stamped my right foot into the ground.

"I don't understand. How can we protect people while doing nothing? We have to do something to help!"

The left eyebrow of my master started to twitch again, an undeniable sign that he, too, was slowly losing his temper. I shivered. The last conversation like this had ended very violent and painful, for only one of us, of course.

But I won't go back now.

"I cannot stay here any longer, discussing philosophy or contemplating the stars, when I know that a few miles away people are suffering. I have to go and help them. Save them!"

"Baka," Hiko snorted in disgust. His deep voice was an unsettling nuance brighter than usual. "If you want to go, you have to beat me first."

He turned and seconds later I felt my hands smashing the sheathed sword on his head. Hiko hadn't taken me for seriously and he paid that.

"You stroke with full power!" he exclaimed amazed, holding his head.

"Because you're not listening!" I screamed, already hoarse.

Hiko screamed back, louder. "No, YOU'RE not listening!" The first time I saw him this upset. He was really angry then. Good. Hopefully he would take me seriously now.

"I want…"

Hiko interrupted me.

"Hiten Mitsurugi," he began gravely, "is the most powerful way of the sword in this land and…"

"We should use it know!" I broke in impatiently.

"_Baka Deshi!"_

I winced at the sound of Hiko's voice. He sounded not only angry but also… desperate. Almost… worried?

"You want to lend your sword to the current disturbance?" he bellowed. His cape fluttered behind him as he walked some steps, clearly agitated. "Then you have to choose one side or another, sooner or later. And whatever side you choose, they will use you and your skills. That's not the purpose of Mitsurugi. That's not why I made you my apprentice."

"But Shishou, I…"

He glared daggers at me, cutting the words off my tounge. "I told you, Mitsurugi is the ultimate technique. It's also the most deadly one. If you want to protect people in this war, you have to kill with this technique."

Kill? I was stunned for a short moment. I've seen killing. I knew what it was about. Never done it myself though. But to serve a greater good…

"You may be right," I tried to explain myself, "but…"

Hikos piercing glance sealed my mouth again.

"The sword is a weapon meant to kill. You can decorate this truth with as many pretty words as you like but it is a truth nevertheless. You kill to protect."

My master breathed heavily, as if the next words were not easy to speak.

"You know, I've killed hundreds of men, to protect others. Like I protected you from the bandits. But they were humans. Whatever they did, they were humans trying to live the only way they knew."

I was suddenly cold, seeing the deep emotions in my master's eyes. It was the first time I saw something like pain and it pained me, too. I didn't want to hurt my master. I wanted to be a good apprentice, someone to be proud of. I wanted to be strong. But…

"If you leave now," Hiko continued, interrupting my thoughts, "you won't ever come back as you are now. You will turn yourself into a murderer, under the direction of men who write their own justice. If you join them, they will use you and Mitsurugi will make you a mass-murderer."

The silence after his foreboding words was heavy as lead, suffocating - and it demanded a decision. And I decided.

"I want to save the people who are suffering." My voice was calm now.

"Then go and brand yourself a murderer."

The last words he spoke to me. Then he turned and left, his white cape floating around his mighty features. I believed it was for good. It hurt. He hadn't understood me – but at least he let me go.

I turned and walked away. I was about to change the world. Help those suffering under the cruel power of the Bakufu-regime. Play my part in this bloody revolution.

_How naïve I was._

* * *

„You only see, what your eyes want to see.

How can life be, what you want it to be?

You're frozen

When your heart's not open."

* * *

Shivering Kenshin pulled his worn-out magenta gi nearer, imperceptibly wincing at the unexpected touch of a hand on his shoulder. He had been so lost in memories that he hadn't even heard her coming.

"Kaoru-dono…," he hurried to stammer, quickly adding an "Oro", in case he'd worried her with his gloomy face.

She smiled at him, her hair still damp and her cheeks a soft shade of pink from the warm bath. The scent coming from her smelled like spring in Kenshin's nose. _Cherry-blossoms…_

Taken aback by the depth of her eyes he just kept staring at her face. _She really is beautiful._

"Kenshin?" Kaoru finally asked, her hand still on his shoulder. "Everything alright? Your eyes seem to be miles away."

Slowly, Kenshin nodded. "Yes, you're right, that you are. I was lost in thoughts."

With her big, blue eyes she continued her piercing glance. She was expecting a more explanatitory answer.

_But how can I explain more without worrying her more?_ Kenshin worried himself. _Or even scaring her?_

He bent his head, breaking the eye-contact.

_Should I tell her, that this falling snow, this pure white reminds me how I used to be before my hands were ever stained with another person's blood? How I sacrificed my purity?_

She lifted her hand and some part of Kenshin wanted to catch her wrist, hold her beside him - but instead, like always, he remained unmoved, the moment passed, two people, separated again. Kaoru's smile faded, her face serious now, her eyes deep and bottomless – a sudden fear struck Kenshin: these eyes might be able to look through his reserve, his mask of restraint… He quickly looked away and heard the sigh of Kaoru, who turned to go. He had hurt her knowingly, but there was no other choice.

_I can't tell her… I can't open myself completely… yet._

"Take a bath, Kenshin," she said before entering her room. "You're cold like ice already. If you sit there much longer, you'll get ill." Said that, an edge in her voice more frostier than snow could ever be, she closed the door and left Kenshin alone on the engawa. The sun was sinking fast now, changing the white snow suddenly into red.

How some part of him longed to follow her, smell her scent, lay beside her, feel her warmth. But his eyes were still glued to the snow, in his vision red slowly melting into blood.

_How can I ever share this picture with Kaoru? _the thought, more frustration creeping into him with every breath of icy air._ How can I ever tell her all those haunting memories, white snow tainted red?_

--

**On a winterday like this…**

I was standing in a dark ally, name unimportant, already forgotten. I simply stood there and felt nothing – except a burning pain on my left cheek.

The scar refused to heal properly. And since the that man's sword cut me, it felt like my whole body was slowly dying. My feelings, my sensibility to pain, sensibility at all – everything was numb, covered by thick layers of icy snow. Just my cheek continued to burn, more with every kill.

The burning was there now, too. Reminding me, that I had killed, without a second thought, again.

Somewhere in my head a deep voice whispered something I couldn't understand. I knew it had to be my master's voice, cryptic to me like it had been back then. Grimly I flick the blood from my blade. He had been right. But still – becoming this was the only choice for me.

It was almost a year now since I joined the Patriots, offered them my skill. They turned my into a soulless weapon, as expected. At the beginning I was still doing willingly whatever they ordered me to. Nobody took notice of me at first. After some months of assassinations that had changed to the contrary. I tried to continue my shadow-existence, but now everybody noticed me – and feared me. Everybody knew my blade and my nick-name, Hitokiri Battousai.

A name causing strong men to plead. The name of a merciless manslayer, hunting down everybody who crossed swords with him once. My leaders, too, addressed me by that name, gave me orders in form of black envelopes constantly. And I still accepted them, executed them, not willingly but mechanically now, but nobody took notice of that. And it didn't matter.

And then, back in this nameless alley, I was thankful for this name, called out in fear, hate, rage, respect, plead – because it was the only thing I could hide behind these days. It was holding me together, saving me from shattering.

Soundlessly, snow began to fall. I watched the pure flakes turning red with the blood of my victims.

I still wanted to protect.

And I felt coldness. I almost smiled. A feeling at last. I was not numb nor dead yet. I still felt something, even just coldness. Better than emptiness, lurking behind this cold. I was freezing and I revelled in it. They turned me into a weapon but there was still a human feeling left in me.

Returning from my assignment and entering the Inn I was stone again. "You are not human," the faces of my fellow Ishin told me, their fearful eyes stated: "You are a ruthless murderer. A demon."

And while I closed the door of my room and tiredly sunk to the floor, sword still in my hands; while I sat there and desperately tried to lose the madness of the night and my own guilt, I finally allowed myself to admit that they were close to the truth though.

With every life I had destroyed, I had lost a part of my humanity. And just cold snowflakes alone wouldn't prevent me from this decay into madness. I would not hesitate to go on, until the end, whatever end it might be for me.

Humanity, a life? Abdicable, in favour of a new era, free of war, fear and injustice.

Suddenly I felt a fear worse than I have ever felt: What, if the smell of blood would consume my mind and soul one day and I wouldn't care about these last ideals anymore?

_I wouldn't have cared. I know that now. It would have been just a question of time._

* * *

"You're so consumed with how much you get,

you waste your time with hate and regret,

you're broken

when your heart's not open"

* * *

The snow had turned from blood-red into black. The moonless sky was dark, the stars too weak to shine through the massive blanket of clouds. Kenshin still sat motionless on the engawa, one the way to face the most precious and painful memories.

_If she hadn't come, I would have thrown away everything. Lost my mind to the bloodlust of Battousai. But she saved me._

Behind the rice-paper-walls, he heard Kaoru's breath. She slept, not snoring but breathing deeply and calmly. Was it really her breath, that he heard or was it his mind, playing a trick on him? Maybe it was a sound out of his memories? The breath of someone long lost? Memories of another woman, his first love?

Feeling guilty he tried to suppress these peculiar memories. "I cannot think about Tomoe while listening to Kaoru's breath!" he muttered weakly, for a short moment he could even feel embarrassment heating his face.

Nevertheless, he remembered clearly that it was

**O****n a winter****day like this,**

when we returned home, all of our medicine sold.

Winter was coming hard. The road war barely to see. I tried to stamp a little path for Tomoe, who was following behind.

Almost half a year had passed since we lived in the peace of our house in Otsu and I still couldn't believe it. Live was so peaceful here but never boring. Quite the contrary – I understood now, how horrible my life as an assassin had really been. Never again did I want to return to the chaotic city, but deep inside a dark voice assured me that this was a futile wish.

"Tomoe?"

I turned around, seeing her sunk in the deep snow, her cheeks reddened and thick snowflakes whirling through her hair. Little silver clouds ascended from her mouth. She was very tired.

Looking at her, I suddenly knew exactly what I was killing for, the meaning of peace: A home and someone to protect. Someone to love. I didn't know if I was able to feel love. But it was the strongest feeling I could remember having ever felt.

The weeks after the escape from Kyoto I doubted that I would ever feel again. But day by day something inside of me melted, and it was Tomoe, who dug out my heart under the thick layers of snow. I was more surprised than she that it was still beating under all those layers of ice.

If I would lose her…no. It would break me, I knew that.

"Tomoe." I reached out my hand, offering her help. "I... I will protect you."

Her eyes widened, feelings clearly visible in her normally impassive face but not yet readable by someone, who had so forcefully neglected to feel anything for at least a year now. Slowly, she took my hand and I knew that I would never let her go again. I would protect her forever.

_I failed._

_--_

Everything around him has turned black. The sky, the snow. He himself.

_It's always the same, following the memories this way. Everything vanishes in pure darkness. What's left is just a sound…_

A sound, so silent, barely audible. But still it was like music, a song filled with a melody of such unending sadness that his heart wanted to shatter.

It was the sound of snow, falling.

Silently trickling down. Softly touching the ground, becoming one with the unstained white. Or getting caught in his leashes. In his red hair. On his bare skin, melting.

It was a melody full of transience, only to be heard by the ones who had been on the verge of eternal darkness.

He first heard its melody

**On a winter****day like this…**

I listened to the song of falling snow. Or else the echoing silence around me wouldn't have been bearable. After an endless time, I was finally able to open my eyes again. I saw my breath in the cold winter-air. Felt the weight of her head on my knees. Smelled the blood. So much blood. Her blood, my blood, the blood of the man trying to kill me trough her. Added in my mind: the blood of all those killed by my idealistic sword.

Now I understood what my master had tried to teach me: the value of a life.

She was dead. And slowly becoming cold. Finally the pain returned and I felt every wound on my beaten-up body. Somehow I found the strength to get up. To carry her back to our house. I never looked back. I didn't want to see the pure snow tainted red with her blood. I just kept on listening to the sound.

It was her melody. She was like the snow, falling.

A cold beauty. Touchable but not quite reached. Distant, but strongly present with her piercing eyes. A snowflake in the winds of a cruel destiny and yet - the strongest branch can break under the weight of a single flake. She had melted my heart with her love but still there had always remained a cold sadness in her eyes.

Now I knew the reason. I had taken from her the most important thing in her life. Now I knew what the loss of a loved one felt like. That's why I couldn't understand her sacrifice.

I was the one to die – not the other way round!

Left alone, just my life and guilt remained. I had to live on, but to lay down in the snow and die there like she had did was tempting, too.

Her body was the heaviest ever to carry. It was only the sound that gave me the strength to move on through the forest of barriers. Her melody of caducity and snow, falling.

* * *

"Now there's no point in placing the blame  
And you should know I'd suffer the same  
If I lose you,

my heart will be broken."

* * *

The darkness, that had filled his heart those years after Tomoe's death had been too intense, too black to remember but memories were still burned into his mind in sharp-edged pictures, and even after ten years they had barely faded.

He had gone back to Kyoto, not as a Hitokiri but as a mobile attacker, soldier, bodyguard, whatsoever. It had made no difference. It involved killing as before. In his eyes and in those of his fellow Ishin Shishi he had stayed a murderer. His name had still been Hitokiri Battousai and he had done nothing to change that. This name had been the hideout for his broken self, made it possible for him to continue.

It dawned. Kenshin looked up, surprised to find himself still sitting on the engawa, in the same position like in the afternoon.

_How long since I last moved my body? I wonder if I'm already frozen to the wooden floor. It's been quite a while since I felt a cold like this. It was back then,_

**On a winter day like this, **

when I desperately tried to free myself from the coldness of the Hitokiri, already an inseparable part of me. Standing on the battlefield, coldness of dead bodies around me and coldness in my own, I knew that everything would be over soon. Firing canons made the smoky air biting, the smell of death, insufferable thick. The cries of the dying and the clanging of weapons was a mere murmur, a background-melody in this heavy, echoing ballad of final silence.

I looked down on my hands and my swords, stained with the blood of uncountable men I had killed during this seemingly endless battle.

I was exhausted. Not just because of two days fighting without any rest. It was time to leave Hitokiri Battousai behind.

Shrill shouts and I was immediately on the edge again. Obviously some Bakufu-Troups had gathered themselves for a last, desperate attack. It was not over yet.

"Senseless," I thought, tired, as I awaited their charge together with other Ishin Shishi fighters. Nobody came at close quarters to me – I was feared likewise by friend and foe.

"They continue to fight for some stupid idea of honour," I spoke to myself. "But there's no honour in bloodshed, on no side. They die although the battle is already decided."

Like waves on a surge they broke into us. They were desperate and fought with all they got but so was I. My left hand unsheathed the wakizashi, katana already drawn with my right. Then I slashed through the masses. A few minutes passed and I'd already slaughtered a dozen men at least. My body ached out of exhaustion and all the little cuts I'd received throughout the battle cried for treatment. My arms were heavy and soaked with blood and lives. Every face, felled by one of my swords, was burned into my mind and every stroke pained me like I was slicing myself.

Was there no end to this nightmare?!

Another man cut down by my sword. Another stabbed by my wakizashi. A rousing turn and two attackers lost their heads. On and on, the endless dance of death. Finally, voices began to shout – out of joy and triumph. Flags of red and gold were hoisted against the morning sky, behind them still dark and menacing clouds of smoke. And little, white flakes of snow. I sighed and bowed my head. This time it was over for good.

Some time passed before I was able to look up again, before I was able to fully comprehend what this "over" meant for me.

No more fighting.

No more killing.

I looked down at the swords in my hands. The instruments of murder. I hammered them into the ground with the last furious energy left in me.

Without a second glance I left the scene of horror. My hand touched the skin on my left cheek. The scar, her sign. It was time to fulfil a promise.

* * *

"Love is a bird, she needs to fly  
Let all the hurt inside of you die  
You're frozen

when your heart's not open"

* * *

In front of me the snow has already turned from a deep black into a slight pink. I'm surprised that the snow-blanket is still untouched and seconds later shocked by that sentiment, for I almost had expected to see the last remains of a furious battle beneath the white. It's hard to lose the grips of past times. Slowly I try to stand up – and it hurts.

Eleven years had passed since that last memory and I am older now. And to spend a night out in the open without much shelter in the middle of winter can't be good, whatever age one might be – let alone sane. I feel the dull crunching of my vertebrae while getting up. I'm stiff, my feet probably frozen.

I still feel very cold.

And not the slightest joy creeps into my heart as I watch the new morning sun climbing over the rooftops of the city. She's warm and blinding, painting the snow golden but I remain cold. As I was back then.

"Kenshin?"

Kaoru's voice. Without turning I know she's standing behind me, with sleepy eyes fresh from bed. Her scent is carried to my nose by the clear morning-air.

Suddenly I feel her hand on my shoulder. Not expecting any body-contact, I wince imperceptibly, then, slowly turning, I look into her eyes with as much as a smile I can honestly manage.

Pitiable result, Kaoru's face immediately looks concerned.

"Don't tell me, that you've been sitting out here all night long? You look half frozen."

Her enraged face almost makes me laugh though I feel guilty. I bend my head. In case I don't know how to respond it is better for me to hide my face.

"Not good," a strict voice states. "Look at me when I'm speaking to you!"

I swallow. This commanding tone. Carefully I glance at her through bangs of red hair. What should I tell her? I can't tell her what kept me awake this night. What falling snow means to me. I can't share that with her.

She seems to sense the sudden barrier between us and I feel her becoming sad. I am so sorry. Maybe I failed, my hopes and wishes failed, maybe we will never…

Interrupting my thoughts a single white flake twirls past me and gets caught in Kaoru's raven hair, laying unbound over her shoulders. Other flakes begin doing the same.

"Do you know what I think of, seeing snow, falling?"

Kaoru's innocent question makes my heart ache. I just know my own memories. After a minute of silence, I softly respond "No."

Her hand still rests on my shoulder and now she smiles at me. Her hair is already windswept and her yukata crinkly from sleep but nevertheless she has a beauty far beyond the rising sun. With sudden desperation I wish to share everything with her, all my thoughts, memories, wishes. But how can that be, without destroying her pure innocence with my bloodstained past?

"It was a hard training-day," she starts, "and I gave everything I had. Yahiko was exhausted, too. Almost on the walk home we recognized that you were still in the Dojo. We went back, and you sat there, sleeping. In the middle of the hall."

She chuckles. Her hand on my shoulders softly moved closer to my neck.

"You were totally confused. You didn't knew your own name, Kenshin. You told us it was because you dreamed of the past. I was surprised that you talked about it… I knew about your past before, but only from stories…" She pauses and I close my eyes. It hurts, seeing her being scared about my past, even if she tries to hide it.

"I just wanted to say," Kaoru finally continues, "I didn't know a thing. I didn't know anything about you, how you were in the past. You seemed so distant on the way home, not really present. You stopped near a sakura tree and I watched with you the falling petals."

She sighs. I know how the story continues.

"Back then, not a day passed when cherry-blossoms weren't stained red with blood," she quotes me.

I'm a little bit surprised that she remembers my exact choice of words though I wanted to forget everything about it.

"And then you continued talking, about the Shinsengumi and the Bakumatsu no Douran. How you fought back then. You even pitied your strongest enemies, saying many of the honorable fighters were dead now or betrayed their ideals. And then you smiled, white petals in your hair. You asked me, if this were strange things to say."

I'm silent. She's waiting for a response. More than a soft nod I can't manage. I still feel cold. Only my shoulder is warm. Kaoru's hand lies there.

As the silence becomes more and more unbearable with every minute passing by I try to speak, voice raw.

"You were surprised that I told you something about my past." A pause. "It was not much later when the past finally caught up with me. The sakura-blossoms were just a dark foreboding."

I turn my head away from her, feeling ashamed. It was back then when she saw me, really saw me – being Battousai, my dark self, uncontrolled, awakened by Saito Hajime, out for his blood.

Kaoru shakes her head and looks me straight into the face. A little bit shy I respond her glance, over my shoulder into her deep, blue eyes.

"The hanami were not a dark foreboding," she corrects me, "They were like the touch of destiny."

Her breath forms little white clouds in the morning-air. Slowly she moves closer, I feel the warmth of her body centimetres away from my back.

_"Mmm-mm-mm…If I could melt your heart"_

"I thought I'd die when you left me," she says, her voice barely audible. It's hard for her to talk about that fateful night. "You told me sayonara, left me and I thought it would be for good. I was so afraid I'd never see you again. But what made me even more afraid was … that you might lose yourself in the fight against Shishio."

Her voice is really near the back of my ear. Her warm breath on my neck.

"Now I understand that everything was destiny. If you hadn't left me…"

Her head finally leans on my shoulders from behind.

"…if you hadn't gone to Kyoto… you couldn't have found yourself, completed your training. And I wouldn't have found my inner strength. But I followed you and you came back with me. You said: Tadaima. I'm home…"

_"Mmm-mm-mm...we'd never be apart"_

"Kaoru-dono," I whisper and my hands touch her silk-like hair. Warm tears wet my shoulder. Finally I find the strength to turn.

"Don't cry," I softly speak, caressing her cheek. She winces. Instantly I step back. I was too intrusive. But Kaoru had already caught my hands, rubbing them between hers.

"Cold as ice," she stated quite horrified. It isn't until now that I feel my fingertips, prickling painfully. I manage a rueful smile.

"I'm sorry, Kaoru-dono," I'm struggling for the words that I actually don't want to say. "Falling snow… It awakens memories in me… painful memories. I don't know If I can ever share all of them with you."

"You don't have to," she smiles. "Your memories are a part of you. You mustn't seal them away, you have to taste them from time to time, even if it's bitter, like tonight. But you don't have to share them with me. Everybody has secrets. It's just…" Her face suddenly changes to a deep red and she looks down to the ground, squeezing my hands.

"It's just… I want you to open your heart. Because I want to open my heart too, for... the man I love."

Paralysed again I stare on my callused hands, caught in hers. Watch avertedly how she lifts them to her mouth and kisses my fingertips. It prickles and I can't move, not even think. I just feel an indescribable warmth floating from my fingers throughout my whole body.

"Kaoru." I embrace her slender body, caressing her back. The cold vanishes slowly. I wish to stand like this forever. "I'm sorry…"

"You know, Kenshin," she whispers into my left ear, "Every winter has its spring. Never forget that."

Her body snuggles at mine, not just wanted to be embraced. She wants to share herself with me now, her thoughts, her body, her life. Lifting her chin I kiss her deeply, feeling her warm lips respond with the desire I also feel glowing deep in me. With this kiss time stops, no past, no future. I feel empty and full at the same time.

No coldness of falling snow in my heart anymore. Our kisses are becoming more and more intense. Demanding. Without any control over my own body I move her in the direction of the bedroom. More than willingly she follows.

_„Mmm-mm-mm…Give yourself to me"_

As I lay her down on the futon (I can't even remember having opened the door) my body suddenly freezes. What am I doing here?

With asking eyes Kaoru looks at me. I respond her glance, unsmiling.

"I don't know If I can ever share my whole heart with you. Some parts of me… some memories…You don't want any part of that."

She seals my mouth by putting her forefinger over my lips.

"Don't you think that falling snow sometimes looks like falling cherry-blossoms?"

She's kissing me again and my restrictions break. With sudden clarity I know that she's the one to change the last remnants of cold in me into warmth. The one to replace the dark memories with new, light ones. With her I'm able to become the man I always wanted to be, free from the grip of past. With her I'll learn again to open my heart and myself completely. With her I will be complete again.

_"You are the key."_

This morning we shared ourselves, opened our hearts, looked into each other's souls. I loved, for the first time since my childhood, with all my heart.

And I never felt like this before. Like the first snow – pure.

--

_On a winterday like this,_

_It was the fist time_

_Kenshin Himura smiled_

_While listening to the _

_Sound of snow,_

_Falling._

* * *

First time I wrote something romantic and gooey. I hope it flows, with all those flashbacks and perspective-switches… it took me forever to translate it out of the german language. Please give me some feedback if I did well and how I can improve! Thanks!!

To evade any misunderstandings: I am a great fan of Tomoe, too. But imo it was just an other kind of love they both shared and experienced.

Inspirations: The Soundtrack of the first OVA, of course – I almost cry everytime I listen to it…

Decay into madness: This phrase obviously hints at this gorgeous fic by conspirator! Go, R&R it!

--

Words:

Engawa - traditional wooden Veranda.

Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu – have I to explain that?

Baka Deshi – Hikos second Name vor Kenshin, meaning stupid apprentice.

Shishou – the acient and humble adress for a swordsmaster

Hitokiri – Killer

Bakufu – the military power that basically runned Japan, overthrown by the patriots, the Ishin Shishi.

Tadaima – I am at home (response to: Okaeri: Welcome home)


End file.
